Arriva, an international public transport brand, is just not delivering yet. People were prepared to accept teething problems. You do not replace a decades-old transport system and get it right on the first day. But the problem appears to be running deeper. Something, somewhere is going very wrong and the sooner it is identified and sorted the better. That much is obvious.
What is perhaps not so obvious is bound to make you fume even more than an hour on a Sliema bus stop in mid-July. I am reliably informed that about half the problem is being caused by the 180 Arriva drivers who are not showing up for work. Who are these men - some of whom have already been fired - and why don't they seem to give a damn whether they get fired?
Take a deep breath and set your AC to 16 degrees. These men are practically all ex-xarabank drivers. To effect the reform, government paid them an average of €110,000 for each bus they owned. Many owned just one, quite a number owned a couple. One of them owned 23, which means that he pocketed over €2.5 million for his yellow clunkers.
Get the picture now? These are the men who are staying home to watch reruns of Ipokriti instead of picking you and your sweating, sticky self up from a bus stop. Do they care? Of course not. Most of them are in their forties and older, they have just deposited hundreds of thousands of €s in their bank accounts. What do they care if Arriva fires them? They probably started working with Arriva precisely to cause this havoc.
These Jonnys are not laughing all the way to the bank. They did that already and are now laughing at us.
6 comments:
Lou, your analysis is accurate. However, to the professional architects who planned changes such as this one, the fact that the old buses' drivers had no incentive to work, and all incentives to stay home, should have been (and probably was) foreseeable.
So your first two paragraphs should be the last ones, if you see what I mean.
Arriva should be accountable for what it does. And the Maltese Government should have been involved enough to foresee some of the issues. (i.e. The Maltese Government should also be accountable).
Arriva's IT system should not have gone bonkers. Plus, Business Continuity Plans should have been in place to restore the system if it did.
Arriva (and the Maltese Government) should not have relied this much on the old buses' drivers.
Such reliance did however come very handy to the company's PR.
Lou fair comments you made BUT that surely is not the only reason! When I saw your programe re Arriva...all looked perfect...however the company seemed unprepared even in its `state of the art` IT system! Alos if the routs are not re-arrranged...it will never take off!
@anonymous. Agreed. I specifically said that half the problem resulted from the operational havoc caused by the drivers. Note also that at the end of Bondiplus I had said that this is what they were promising but I added that we'll have to see whether they will. So far they have not.
lou as you pointed out at tactical level former bus owners have been given too golden a handshake and are knowingly sabotaging the bus system just because a 6 month probation period exists. I would also go a sep further and point out that ETC only sends out the commencement of employment form about 3 months later date which is ridiculous as employees do not know where they stand and conversely their employers cannot commence an action in tort against the above in the employment tribunal regardless if that person is bound by a contract of/for services. At Strategic level the past few days have shown that a culture clash coupled with new routes and inexperienced drivers where being tried and tested to the cost of small businesses, employees, companies as well as last but definitively not least the sweaty commuter.
Also, at a strategic level, Arriva should be in a position to provide an attractive package to attract and retain enough drivers.. Do we know what is offered to these drivers, and how their packages compare to the rest?
Much of the "deeper" issue (mentioned by Lou) is rooted in the "shortage of drivers" problem. Arriva is not in a position to enforce its management system on employees who ARE in "power", and who, presumably, have little incentive to stick to their employment.
So all the blame is on the 180 drivers? give us a break will you?
Out of the 500 odd drivers employes, 180 did not turn up according to your figures. So we should have 3/5 of the busses running. Perhaps you might with to explain to me why I waited for 45mins in naxxar road for a bus, when under the old system I NEVER waited for more that 15mins, and buses usually came in clusters of areound 3. So where are the rest of the buses? Could it be that Arriva tried to employ less drivers in the first place?
Do we really expect drivers to have their work conditions changed 2 days before running their first trip?
The compensation you mentioned was given to the OWNERS of the buses which in some cases where not the actual drivers, so these people got nothing, just another job.
Perhaps Manuel Mallia from Transport Malta might want to come out of hiding and tell us three things...
1. What he is planning to do
2. How long it takes him to get from Zurrieq to work these days
3. Whether he's planning a strike just as he had as president of the KSU back in Labour's 22 month stint at Castille.
ISTHU
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